Public health research support through the European structural funds in central and eastern Europe and the Mediterranean
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RESEARCH
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Public health research support through the European structural funds in central and eastern Europe and the Mediterranean Mark McCarthy
Abstract Background: Public health research provides evidence for practice across fields including health care, health promotion and health surveillance. Levels of public health research vary markedly across European Union (EU) countries, and are lowest in the EU’s new member states (in Central and Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean). However, these countries now receive most of the EU’s Structural Funds, some of which are allocated to research. Methods: STEPS, an EU-funded study, sought to assess support for public health research at national and European levels. To identify support through the Structural funds, STEPS drew information from country respondents and internet searches for all twelve EU new member states. Results: The EU allocates annually around €7 billion through the Structural Funds for member states’ own use on research. These funds can cover infrastructure, academic employment, and direct research grants. The programmes emphasise links to business. Support for health research includes major projects in biosciences, but direct support for public health research was found in only three countries - Cyprus, Latvia and Lithuania. Conclusions: Public health research is not prioritised in the EU’s Structural Funds programme in comparison with biomedicine. For the research dimension of the new European programme for Structural Funds 2014-2002, ministries of health should propose public health research to strengthen the evidence-base for European public health policy and practice.
Introduction Public health, undertaken at organisational and system level through disease prevention and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of health care, contributes importantly to population health and social wellbeing. Evidence is needed to develop public health policies and practice. Work in a previous EU study, SPHERE, described public health research from a European perspective [1]. A strong geographical gradient in publication rates, highest in the Scandinavian countries and UK and lowest in the southern and Eastern Europe, was found for all public health publications and within six sub-disciplinary themes [2]. STEPS (Strengthening Public Health Research in Europe) was developed and funded through Correspondence: [email protected] Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, 1-19 Torrington Place, London WC1E 6BT, UK
the EU’s Science in Society programme to investigate the gradient further. The objective of STEPS was to assess the public health research systems in Europe and the contribution of civil society organisations to health research in the EU ‘new member states’. STEPS held workshops at national level in the 12 EU ‘new member states’ - the ten countries in Central Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia) and two in the Mediterranean (Cyprus
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